Nagoro is a small village in the mountains on the Japanese island of Shikoku where no child has been born for more than 18 years. It is located at an altitude of 1,954 meters in the middle of the mountains of the Iya valley. Its location makes accessing this remote place no easy task, so its inhabitants have been migrating to other areas.
60 years ago, Nagoro had hundreds of inhabitants, there were workers, children, life, but now there are just over two dozen adults living in this secluded piece of land. The primary school closed its doors in 2012, shortly after the last two students finished sixth grade. But what’s curious about this village is not the rural exodus that many other areas have suffered. No, no. What’s truly curious is the project that Ayano Tsukimi, a 67-year-old village resident who also migrated at one point but returned to care for her father, started. It was upon her return that she realized how desolate her hometown was and, in 2003, decided to bring it back to life. How? By planting seeds that never germinated, so she decided to give her agriculture project a boost by creating scarecrows.
What started as a scarecrow project ended up extending over time and Tsukimi created an entire community of dolls to which she gave personality, profession, and a vital role in Nagoro. Thus, she came up with the idea of replacing residents with dolls.
“I wanted there to be more children because then the village would be more cheerful, so I made the children,” Ayano said.
Currently, the village has 379 inhabitants: 29 humans and 350 dolls.
Nagoro back on the map, welcoming outsiders, curious visitors, and travelers who are greeted by dolls plowing the fields, sitting at a bus stop, thinking, studying at the nursery school, cooking…
The dolls are, in the words of their creator, like her own children.
A curious story that reminds us that involuntary loneliness is very tough, sometimes sharpening our creativity to alleviate it.
